Ex-Judge released from year’s administrative detention

By Bai Tiantian Source:Global Times Published: 2012-11-9 0:45:06

A judge who was fired from his job in Northeast China's Jilin Province was released Tuesday from house detention after local authorities determined there was not sufficient evidence to prove he had attempted to take his case to the US embassy in Beijing.

Guo Xuehong, former deputy director of Yitong County People's Court, was detained after police in Beijing saw him in front of the US embassy on August 1, 2012. The police claimed he was trying to get help from the embassy and sent him back to the county the next day.

On August 9 he was given a year's labor re-education for "irregular petitioning" but was allowed to serve the time in his home due to his poor health.

"I was only passing by the embassy but the police found the case files in my bag and thought I wanted to appeal my case," Guo told the Global Times, adding that he had traveled to Beijing to seek medical treatment as his health had deteriorated after he was fired in 2010 along with two other judges.

According to previous news reports, Guo presided over a case in which his court had frozen the assets of a company for 17 months in 2009. An agency under the Jilin Provincial Commission for Disciplinary Inspection later ruled that the ruling by Guo and two other judges was inappropriate and had caused great economic losses to the company.

"I had followed judicial procedures and had done everything according to the law," Guo said.

Guo claimed that the commission's agency had forged evidence to help the company and blamed the county court for a wrongful ruling. The agency could not be reached for comment.

Guo said the agency "openly asked us to unfreeze the company's asset but the court decided its ruling should stay the way it was," Guo said.

The report from the local news portal xwh.cn said Guo and the other judges had illegally sealed assets worth 3.41 million yuan ($546,220), far more than should have been frozen, and had turned a blind eye to the defendant's appeal.